snow riding

Add this to the list of friendly unicycling comments from the uninitiated:

“That thing got four wheel drive?”

I heard paraphrases of that from three different folks as I unicycled around the
snow packed streets of my Arlington VA neighborhood.

Snow riding was very nice except for the disruptive hidden soft spots and the
still problematic left crank of my Semcycle XL. The soft spots usually caused
a stumble and dismount, while the loosening crank limited my ride to only
about a mile.

> does anyone have any interesting snow stories to share?

My favorite snow riding activity was probably snowbank-busting. We would
go to the local mall parking lot after a snow, where the snow had been
plowed into long “walls” about 3’ high of hard packed stuff. You ride at
the wall hard, bashing your wheel into it. Depending on the size of the
wall and the consistency of the snow, it might take a dozen or more hits
to finally break through.

Check the snow first. If it’s been melted and frozen since it was plowed,
riding hard into it is going to hurt!

> any advice on mounting in snow?

You have to move slowly and smoothly. Learning to do it will improve your
mounting technique.

Stay on top, John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone jfoss@unicycling.com
www.unicycling.com

“You’re not supposed to wash your Roach armor” - Nathan Hoover, bragging
about his safety equipment cleaning methods